"The rollout at Europe's largest council follows a disastrous go-live of Oracle Fusion in 2022, which left the authority unable to produce auditable accounts and contributed to it becoming effectively bankrupt. The total cost of moving to Oracle has gone from an early business case estimate of £19 million to around £131 million. In 2020, the council planned to replace a legacy SAP system with a standard Oracle implementation. However, the project evolved to include extensive customizations, including a Bank Reconciliation System that ultimately failed to function properly."
"It became clear that focusing on an April go-live date would increase risk. As the programme moved through end-to-end testing, getting the data and operations ready, we planned a stocktake. We have listened to our colleagues, who are doing a brilliant job on preparing the council through system testing, and championing the changes to council processes, and reviewed our progress on testing and readiness."
"The replacement was expected to go live in April for the new financial year, but in a written briefing to councillors last week, officials said the council had decided to delay the launch until at least the summer. Ensuring the accuracy of staff pay was one of the main reasons for re-planning the go-live date. Council officers argued it was a timeline decision and a risk-reduction measure based on evidence from readiness reviews."
Birmingham City Council postponed the planned April relaunch of its Oracle Fusion ERP until at least the summer to reduce implementation risk and allow staff more time to adapt to vendor standard processes. A 2022 go-live failure left the council unable to produce auditable accounts and contributed to an effective bankruptcy. The Oracle move escalated from an estimated £19 million to around £131 million after extensive customizations and a failed Bank Reconciliation System. The council reverted to an out-of-the-box Oracle reimplementation and adopted third-party income management software. Payroll accuracy and readiness reviews motivated the revised timeline.
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